Category Archives for market a creative

Pinterest is a powerhouse for creative business owners, it’s a fact.

There’s plenty to say about optimizing your website, creating a pinterest business profile and cranking out some quality pins to grow your brand.

And as creatives we’re all over the concept of boards, making them attractive and filling them with goodies to help spread the word about our businesses.

Of course, as a business owner we know that it’s about the customer and not our personal preferences, this is why we strive for excellence in pin selection and don’t shy away from other people’s amazing content. All in the effort to build a solid, stunning and satisfying experience for our ideal pinners.

And then there are Group or Collaborative Boards

I bet you’ve seen them. This is where mulitple pinners can pin to a designated, themed board and all profit from the collective creativity. It’s a win-win-win across the board.

Creative Business owners benefit from reaching niche audiences, for example. Take Inkovator: we create books which compliment teaching in grade school, books like “Create Your Own Comics” – so finding a collaboration board with teachers or teaching supplies or education ideas is bound to help me do TWO things:

Reach more like-minded pinners who are searching for educational themed pins

Fill my own profile with an attractive complimentary topic which is populated by a collaboration of pinners

Needless to say, I think Group/Collaborative Boards are amazing and I’m not alone!

But have you heard about Pinterest Communities?

Recently and on the sly, Pinterest has opened up a NEW option for pinners to get active. And it’s the first real steps towards adding true social media elements to the platform.

I can’t tell you how excited this gets me!

Why?

New ways to connect directly with your ideal audience

That means new ways to share your blog posts and product pages

You can create a community around virtually any niche audience which allows you to be hyper specific in your marketing message

You can comment, have conversations and you can post links

Right NOW is the time to get in because once a name for a community is taken, no one else can have that name (I can’t believe I’m telling you this!)

That means you can dominate the social aspect of Pinterest for your main topic/niche/keyword

The Pinterest Communities Catch

There’s always a catch, right?

The catch is that it’s so new and the only way you can create a community is by first joining a community. Sounds like a drag? I think it’s reasonable.

So what’s a Creative Business owner to do?

Join a relevant Community and if you like it and see the potential, go ahead and create your own community.

Here’s a sample of communities to join:

*note: If these links redirect you to the Pinterest homepage, you will need to access it via the Pinterest app (and not a laptop/desktop computer) at least for the first time you go to unlock the communities feature.

Using the Pinterest app on your phone, you should get full access. After you have unlocked the communities feature, it may take up to an hour for your app to update before you can search for communities and create your own.

If you are active on pinterest, why not join the community – communities are new and these are NOT pins, but more similar to FB groups.

The advantage to joining this community will be

1) early adopter advantage
2) quickly find others in similiar niche as you to collaborate and re-pin mutually
3) discover how creative people are exploding their results from using pinterest

Transparency is bloggers gold. At least that’s how I see it. Let’s face it, if you are more afraid to let the competition peak in your playbook than you are of some public accountability, then you’re not likely going to go far with this blogging thing. That’s why I’ve decided to expose my back-side and be accountable to myself and to you as I embark on re-launching this blog.

I’ll be full on sharing what’s working and what’s not working as 2018 progresses.

I started the prep in mid March, dusted off the digital display of the front page and blog pages, re-visited social media (twitter, IG and Pinterest) to assess which one would be my initial focus.

I decided for IG and have shared some of the details along the way inside the Market A Creative group (more on this group later).

Meanwhile my SEO continues to be the strongest pull towards my blog and I’m keenly looking forward to Pinterest launch in the summer. Why? Because colleagues in the creative realm are getting off-the-hook record results from their Pinterest efforts. The only reason I’m not going with Pinterest out the gate is that I need time to get all previous posts pin-ready. Rest assured, going forward, each blog post will come ready to go, though.

All things going well, on May 1st I start my content plan and May 15th I re-launch the blog.

As you can see, journals are going to be a strong emphasis – and this is why I’m creating my own hybrid bullet/journal (there are no bullets in my journal, lol) for keeping it all together.

It will give me visuals, my OWN visuals to use in my blogging, social media shares etc.

And I’ve specifically designed it to suit my exact needs throughout the year.

I’m a mom of six kids, I’m a co-ordinator of one of the fastest growing refugee integration projects in Germany and international speaker. I say that to emphasise how PLANNING and ACCOUNTABILITY are really big for me.

And yes, I’ll be “reporting” back to my blog monthly throughout the next 12 months because this is where I will document my successes, defeats and lessons learned.

All so that I can come out with a stronger brand in the end.

Key to Marketing & Growth: Facts & Numbers

I am a firm believer in tracking and knowing what benefits are coming from all my effort. Numbers allow me to measure speed, results, return on invested time and money. They also allow me to adjust, learn strengths to exploit and struggles to either avoid or find solid support to improve.

I’ve decided, as a visually-laden producer and creative business owner, to create my own business journal which leans on bullet journal principles. Only the booklet I am using doesn’t have bullets 😉 .

You’ll notice the trackers, which are key measurement factors – true. But the momentum I can visualise as I colour in the elements will inspire and motivate me to push forward. It’s a powerful image that gives testimony to my steadfast dedication to growing inkovator.

I desire and will work to meeting this goal: $2000/month with the blog minimum by year’s end.

I’ll reach that through royalties, affiliate and my own product sales (from the website).

Setting Priorities & Implementation

Each month I focus on THREE big goals. Each of those three big goals will be broken down into A, B, and C activities designed to push me toward reaching those three goals (so nine activities in total). I give myself an incentive monthly if I reach those goals. And I assess the effectiveness of my choice of activity to REACH those goals at the end of the month (not just getting the prize, but also the insights to improve upon in the next month).

That’s about it in a nutshell.

What you don’t see is my weekly and daily break-down sheets.

Those will take the monthly and yearly goals and break them down into weekly and daily tasks.

So: to have royalties to the tune of $500/month coming in, I need books on the market.

I’ve set myself the goal to get 250 more books out by Dec 31st.

Broken down to monthly that’s almost 32 books a month. And that’s just more than one book on the market a day.

But having published books is only half the battle.

You have to market them somehow.

So I’ll have daily social media and or blog tasks to push out to the target audience.

Now:

As you hyperventilate, I’ve got systems which keep me on track.

The Power of Systems

The Market a Creative Business Journal is a system.

I’ve got a system for blogging.

I’ve got a system for social media posting.

I’ve got a system for SEO.

I’ve got a system for publishing books.

All in all, on TOP OF ALL I DO on any given day as a mom to 6, heavily involved refugee integration program co-ordinator and international speaker, I will spend up to 2 hours 5 days a week on building my site and assets so that I can reach the $2000/month income level by Dec 31, 2018.

The systems help.

And the journal will help me keep my focus on task.

I hope you might be inspired by one or more aspects of this plan to push your own creative business forward with purpose and intent.

It’s the culmination of the daily small, yet continuous effort that will have us all looking back after a year and saying: DANG, look at that!

Market A Creative Business Journal

Title Page

Because it’s a creative business and I like things pretty 🙂

Social Media Tracker

How can you measure success if you don’t know your numbers? This is my visual tracker to show to myself that my effort is paying off in equity. Ultimately I will see results on my bank statement, yet at the same time, clues are dropped by how the market reacts to the message I send.

Monthly Goals

I focus on THREE big goals each month. Each is broken down in three big tasks or priorities per goal, making my monthly focus NINE things. I make those things measurable and tangible action items to push through no matter what. These take priority over everything else in my business for the month.

Yearly Targets

My monthly goals serve ONE purpose: To get me closer to my year end goals. The whole journal is set up to push activity to reach these targets. Monthly, weekly and even daily spreads all point to growing specific areas of my business.

Systems in Action: May Spread – Goals

Here‘s my May schedule filled in.

For the month I set three top activities which are designed to push me fastest to my year end goal.

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.